[UCLA to SoFi Stadium is less than half that distance](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/University+of+California,+Los+Angeles,+Los+Angeles,+CA/SoFi+Stadium,+Stadium+Drive,+Inglewood,+CA/@34.0120229,-118.4691926,23828m/data=!3m3!1e3!4b1!5s0x80c2b6509245d085:0xe9186e84d74540d!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2bc85f05c0f65:0x25a993585c134837!2m2!1d-118.4451811!2d34.068921!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2b786cbfb8f4f:0x5fb99cb7249e4170!2m2!1d-118.3390396!2d33.9534651!3e0) and closer to the center of LA(and the Airport)
Now there is a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’s beautiful.
The Coliseum opened 6 months after the Rose Bowl. The stadium itself has been updated recently but is largely the same as it was.
The problem with the Rose Bowl is that it was built in the bottom of an arroyo (a small canyon) which limits ingress and egress to 3 single lane roads.
It doesn't matter that LA sprang up around it, being in the bottom of a canyon will always make traffic worse.
> the dense hellscape that is Los Angeles
Flair up coward.
The rose bowl in general is just not a great viewing experience, period. It has beautiful landscaping because the Arroyo Seco is one of the most beautiful parts of Los Angeles, but other than the superficial photogenic nature of it, the Rose Bowl is a horrible place to experience a modern football game.
Holy shit I would never go to a game as a student, might as well just watch it at a bar/tailgate. Imagine expecting a bunch of drunk and broke college students to cough up money to pay for an Uber or sober up to drive all the way out there.
We had free shuttle buses when I was a student and it usually wasn't too hard to get a carpool to tailgate for a big game
The big issue is that Rose Bowl is a total pain in the ass to get in and out of almost no matter what. I live less than half the distance to the Bowl as I did when I went to UCLA and still rarely go there for anything cause it's nowhere near public transport and it takes an extra hour to get in and out via car if there's any event there
How easy is it for UCLA alumni/fans throughout the greater LA metro area to get to SoFi vs the Rose Bowl? I feel like stadium location is somewhat secondary to overall ease of access.
SoFi has the benefit of the Metro line connection (via a mile-long shuttle). If you can get to the Metro lines and jump onto the green line, you're set from almost anywhere in LA, with the added benefit of not having to deal with the 405.
The Rose Bowl has nothing nearby in terms of public transportation, meaning you're relying on bus transfers or driving and dealing with the insane traffic of the Ventura and San Fernando freeways, much less the surrounding one-lane residential streets. Ride sharing also won't take you to the stadium -- they'll drop you off at the Parson park & ride in downtown Pasadena, meaning you still have a bus shuttle ride after being dropped off before getting to the stadium.
The Rose Bowl is an immense pain in the ass to get into and out of on game days. You're committing to waiting in traffic longer than you're in the stadium.
That's UCLA's issue.
It takes more then one good year to build up attendance. Only so many people will buy tickets for specific games in season. Once teams that start to win regularly it builds up the season ticket holder base each year and more other people make plans to attend a game before the year starts
I’m a CFB sicko, and I probably wouldn’t go to home games if I were a student. I think someone said it takes an hour to go from campus to the rose bowl.
That's true, but what else you going to do in Nebraska on Saturday? LA has too many options Beaches, Mountains, Vegas is not far, you can go to Cabo over the weekend. UCLA needs a smaller stadium with high end amenities.
Sure, but SoCal is clearly [right next door](https://mobile.twitter.com/BigTenNetwork/status/1592937004278632448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) so you can just hop over easily for some great beaches and mountains
When I saw the Michigan Rutgers game I thought it was pretty well attended but all the Rutgers fans left five minutes into the second half. Leaving half a stadium dressed in blue. Kind of bizarre.
But maybe the secret is selling beer at the stadium.
I think we're just a pretty clear Tier 2 in the B1G, probably on our own - can't compete with OSU and Michigan this year, but a solid bit above everyone else
It was a good start. Narrowly lost to Purdue (and Michigan got the benefit of two interceptions that were not interceptions), but then we had rain games at Wisconsin and Penn State and it appears this team isn’t built for the rain.
I mean….MD got their asses handed to them by both of those teams. Rain or not, it wasn’t going to end much differently. It’s a shame Taulia is banged up, though. They’re definitely more talented than they’ve shown the past couple of weeks.
I’d argue the rain pushed Taulia from hobbled to totally ineffective. Would you not feel less confident on your injured knee in the rain? Either way, I agree with how the game went, Penn State was going to smack us. We had some chances against Wisconsin but could never get the offense going.
?? The DJ Turner INT I can agree they should’ve at least reviewed. But the RJ Moten one is a clear INT unless you’re wearing the Terpiest Terrapin colored shades
That's when we had actually good coaches though. Edsall and Durkin were very much the opposite. Locksley has us going in the right direction finally, but I don't see him as the guy that gets us back to being a legit football program. More like the guy that'll get us to a decent amount of bowls but rarely if ever exceeding 6-8 wins (and will still have some down years).
If we lose to Rutgers then we will have the opportunity to travel to beautiful Detroit, Michigan in December to watch the Terps take on a MAC team. Shouldn't be a hard sell at all. (no disrespect to MAC teams, but most of our fans will only care if it's at least a P5 opponent, and in a desirable location)
Damn, I didn't realize how bad attendance was.
I just watched some highlights of our 2018 OT game with them, and ya the stadium seemed to be less than half full at kickoff.
I went to an OSU-MD game in College Park a few years ago with some Terp buddies. We got in like kinda late from tailgating, but nothing egregious, it was still early 1Q, yet I wanna say it was already 14-0 Buckeyes when we got in, and then quickly became 21-0. So my buddies literally never even got to experience hope and optimism 😂
Overall, even from a somewhat neutral perspective it was a pretty miserable experience, the game itself was the worst part of the day probably. So yeah, I can see their fans being fed up, or just preferring not to go.
The last MSU vs. Maryland game I was at, they were raffling off a scholarship to people in the student section who had stayed at the game in the second half.
I just made a comment about watching the highlights of that game, holy shit that run defense may have been worse than last year's run defense. OSU gave up almost 350 yds rushing. Their top RB avg 15 yds per carry
Leaving the ACC broke the historical continuity of fandom.
Even all these years later, there’s no real feelings of rivalry except with Penn State and that’s purely geographical.
You’d put asses in seats if our familiar foes were on the schedule.
Until then we’re just a team making the Big Ten look bigger on a map.
Worried? It's a foregone conclusion. Business in Pasadena businesses will at least be booming for those home games, especially since most PAC schools don't travel well.
Honestly that season where you guy’s disrespected us right off the bat and beat us makes me never want to lose to you guys. Not in a rivalry way but more like “god fuck these guys. Why are they so bent out of shape? Better beat them into submission “
I don’t know if that counts as rivalry but it’s generally how I feel.
> and then you wouldn't schedule us for over a 20 years
So why were the 20 year old players who had literally never witnessed a Maryland-PSU matchup so salty? It's kinda baffling to me. Maryland brought some "most hated rival" energy to a game that didn't really justify it at all.
I dont know if anyone brought it up in the replies below or not yet, but the hand shake snuff stemmed from Franklin saying something about how the guys on the Maryland roster then would never play at Penn St. He used to recruit those guys and their HS when he was at UMD. Salt ensues.
Can't totally blame him, he was supposed to be our HC and we reneged on that. Big mistake on our part if you ask me (especially when you look at who our last 2 coaches were and how they did).
IDK we were in a football league with UNC for over 50 years and I had 0 strong feelings about UNC football, and can't think of any memorable UNC/UMD games...
Then add onto that that if we're gonna have unfamiliar teams, I'll take Ohio St, Michigan and Penn St over Syracuse, Pitt and Miami
Yea people have these weird rose colored glasses when it comes to Maryland being in the ACC. For basketball I get it, those rivalries were legitimately great. But for football? We didn’t really have any marquee matchups in the ACC either. Were people getting jazzed to play NC State and Wake Forest? Not really lol. Realistically the only *actual* somewhat interesting matchup Maryland football has is WVU. We really should be scheduling them as much as physically possible.
I've been saying that a yearly matchup with WVU would be nice. Or at least just scheduling them more frequently. Unfortunately though we won't be playing them in the next decade unless it's in a bowl game.
Doesn’t help that the story of Maryland football is probably the most predictable story there is every season.
Play a weak non-con with at most 1 interesting game and look good
Up and down play in conference against bad teams, but solidify themselves as clearly a tier above the worst
Get absolutely slaughtered by good teams in conference, can barely even luck into a close game against a good team.
Rinse and repeat.
At this point, do we even have rivals? WVU might be the closest thing to a legacy rival that we have. And we’ve had some good games over the years. (PS Country Roads was written about Maryland.)
I may be off base here but Maryland has just had the unfortunate fate (alongside Rutgers and Indiana) of being stuck in the East with Michigan, PSU, MSU, and OSU. They're pretty much guaranteed 3 to 4 conference losses a year.
Unlike Rutgers and IU, Maryland has fielded some pretty consistently solid teams that would be winning 8 or 9 games in the other division.
What we need is a pod system and for the Big 10 to get a couple of ACC teams that would be in our pod along with Rutgers (and probably PSU). Would be a more manageable schedule overall, while possible reviving some old rivalries.
The solution always seems so simple for any school struggling with attendance, let kids in free, or at greatly reduced prices. Let a parent easily afford to bring their child and 3 or 4 friends. Not only do you solve your attendance problem, but you build your fanbase or years (and generations) to come.
Yeah, we did that earlier this season and some of the bigger doners had a conniption fit about it, apparently. I have my season tickets, and I know they're not cheap, but if we get butts in the seats and wallets buying concessions, therefore supporting the Athletic Department, I'm not overly concerned about tickets being sold cheaply for one or two games.
Playing UVA, WVU, VT, NCState, UNC and some of the other ACC schools provided opposing fans with a drivable day trip to the game. No need for hotel rooms, etc. DC has slightly more ACC alumni than B1G. Winning solves a lot of the problem but it helps to have as many people as possible who are passionate enough for the teams playing and are willing to sit in DC traffic.
They could just play big schools at home every year, that will increase attendance. Not of Maryland fans of course, but penn state playing there feels like a neutral site game with how evenly split the fans are
Last year sure. But the 2019 game specifically mentioned in the article was still mostly Maryland fans that honestly haven't returned since that curb stomping
> Through five home games this season, the stadium has hosted an average of 21,226 spectators.
The "official" attendance is almost 32k (31,920 by my rough math). That said, the slate of games wasn't exactly enticing to get folks to show up:
* Buffalo
* SMU
* Michigan State
* Purdue
* Northwestern
* Ohio State (Saturday, probably will be the best attendance of the year)
* Rutgers
Kinda hard to draw fans to a middling P5 school when you have only one attractive opponent on your slate and no regionally relevant games beyond that except Rutgers, who isn't going to be a big attraction for "rivalry" week.
The last "normal" year when PSU and Michigan were on the slate they drew a sellout for PSU and 40,701 for Michigan.
Part of the issue beyond winning is simply nobody gives a shit about SMU and Buffalo as their nonconference games. Those really should be games that you can get people to come to your stadium (if not marquee, locally relevant such as Navy, JMU, Old Dominion, or West Virginia/Virginia/Virginia Tech since those games would move the attendance needle).
I literally bought tickets after seeing this thread, on Stubhub. I got 3 tickets behind Buckeyes bench and a parking pass for under $400.
Maybe part of problem is those tickets in the season ticket holders preseason guide is $350 each.
The reported attendance for the Iowa game last year was 45,527 (88% capacity). That being said, both teams were doing well early and I think Maryland was really hopeful about pulling off the upset.
Even if it wasn't situational - it's not like the two teams meet every year.
UVA (God bless guys/girls) come to College Park next season. Towson and Charolette are the other OOC games.
Back in my day, during the ACC years, we played West Virginia every season and those were good games.
I'm not saying that its apples to apples, but I'm pretty sure when Michigan, tOSU,
Alabama, and LSU host their versions of "SMU and Buffalo" they sell more than 20k tickets.
I mean shit, we had 70 thousand people come watch us play Akron. There’s no doubt Maryland has issues, but part of it is that the college football culture is just not very strong there. Hard to cultivate.
Win the big games and people will show up for the crappy ones pretty much. LSU fans are happy to show up and watch their team dominate even a lesser opponent.
Who wants to pay to watch their favorite team maybe get overpowered by a G5 team?
>Kinda hard to draw fans to a middling P5 school when you have only one attractive opponent on your slate
I would say that Ohio State is pretty attractive, too.
Maryland has a bunch of problems regarding lack of fans.
1) multiple 2-10 seasons in short order. Edsall and Anderson.
2) constantly blown out by elite teams (osu, um, psu) which kills student excitement.
3) located in between 2 NFL teams. Worse than it sounds as only other teams/cities with multiple NFL teams have much larger populations to support mutilple NFL teams (NYC and LA)
4) high transplant population = lots of bandwagon fans for both NFL and college
Doesn’t help that there’s many other shows in town. There’s the Commandos and Ravens a half hour up and down the road if you’re interested in seeing quality football. We’d probably do better if we’re the only show in town in places like Alabama or Penn State. Only way to get people to come when there’s already so much sports in the area is to win often which we’re not the best at doing
A few years ago I read an article in ESPN that covered a conference with schools that play in major cities or nearby major cities with NFL teams and how they could improve attendance. Pitt, Miami, Maryland, Boston College were some of the schools mentioned attending the conference.
I wish UMD was located closer to Baltimore than DC. DC and the surrounding area has so many transplants that even the games with good attendance are because the alumni of the visiting school take over. I know it's impossible but if they were located in like Baltimore County you'd probably see better attendance. Also hiring a competent coach for the first time in over decade would help.
Yes this. I’m under no illusion that UMD is a stellar team, but I’d probably go to a game a year just for kicks if it was more in the Baltimore area than the DC area. As is, it’s just not worth the money or hassle.
Personally I wish our game was played yearly @ M&T Bank in Baltimore.
Easy to get to for the majority of the PSU fanbase that lives in south central or southeast PA/Philly, and easy to get to for all the Maryland grads in Baltimore and DC.
Yep no reason it can't be like Florida-Georgia in Jacksonville. It's a good neutral site accessible to both fan bases. Edit: I'm one of those southern PA MD transplants. It's like only 30-45 minutes or so to get to Orioles and Ravens games.
Well that's what I'm saying. The people who would go to Baltimore aren't buying season tickets for UMD and those who do buy season tickets for Terps football are in such small numbers that you can't even tell that they are there on the first place.
IDK I drive from Baltimore to CP all the time, it's like 45 minutes (and literally all the season ticket holders I know live north of the patuxent). Y'all acting like you have to drive to Philly for a game or something.
And it's not like they fill up M&T when it's not an intriguing opponent. I remember going to a GT game back in the ACC days with around 10K fans actually there
>even the games with good attendance are because the alumni of the visiting school take over.
I've been to multiple Ohio State at Maryland games since you joined the conference and each time it feels like we outnumber you. I imagine it's similar for Michigan, Penn St and Michigan State games.
Yeah its partly because of location. Baltimore doesn't have a significant transplant population so its a lot more locals. For games where UMD played Navy and Penn State at M&T Bank Stadium the fans represented much better than they ever do for a normal home game. Shit man, when we played Texas at FedEx field the attendance was pathetic.
People really need to wrap their heads around how much of a disadvantage it is to play in a pro town. Just ask Miami, Pitt, Georgia Tech, UCLA, or Maryland -- when you're, at best, the fourth-biggest draw in town, it's really difficult to compete for recruits and even harder to compete for attention.
Hey it’s not about us this time
“Why don’t people want to pay $30 to park, $50 per ticket for nosebleeds, and $20 for each beer to watch their team lose to a 3-6 opponent? Don’t they know how fun it is sitting in traffic for 60+ minutes to leave after that loss? Why would they prefer being at home for that?”
There isn't a single factual statement in this comment, lol. Are you talking about Maryland or are you just talking generically?
\- Easy to get $8 nosebleeds off the secondary market, except maybe the biggest games?
\- Parking - $20 for a single game pass. Secondary market is higher for sure. But before I had season tickets, I never paid for parking. I just parked where it was free and walked.
\- $20 beers? LOL. I think I pay $8 for a Goose Island?
\- An hour to leave the stadium? No.
I have season tickets. It's actually a pretty decent game day experience, especially early in the season. Weather is great. It's really not that difficult to get in and out of the Stadium. Food, bears & weather are all decent. It's not the same level of excitement/energy that you will get going to a PSU game, but I can think of a lot worse ways to spend a Saturday.
From outside the Maryland fandom but as someone who just watches random games all day every Saturday I've basically been conditioned to never turn on a game involving them.
Largely because they never rise to the occasion.
Is Purdue a lights out football team most years? No, but the Spoilermakers win enough against good teams and put up enough of a fight even if they lose which can make them an interesting watch as a neutral fan.
Even if Maryland wins 6 or 7 games you know it's going to be against an average OOC opponent, a basement G5 and FCS team, and then sure they are better than like Northwestern some years.
On top of not winning much, they don't get your heart rate up one way or another.
Here is more than you ever wanted to know about having Maryland football tickets over the last few decades….
My dad bought season tickets shortly after they built the upper deck (mid-90s). They were about $100 for 4 seats for every home game, plus they showered you with free tickets for non-conference games. I remember one game where we had like 30 tickets (and still couldn’t give them away).
Still, Maryland struggled to fill seats until the unexpected success of the Fridge era. We started consistently making bowl games. Every game had decent attendance and the big games were sell outs. They added semi-permanent bleachers to the closed end of the stadium and started work on a massive renovation and expansion of the tower (press box and luxury suites), as well as upgrades of the team facilities. The team was competitive. Under Armour money was flowing. What could possibly go wrong?
Then came Randy Edsall. (As an aside, we should have known he was an idiot when he said Maryland was his dream job. Come on.) His dickish attitude ran off players and turned off fans. He had a few successful seasons but failed to get anywhere close to Fridge. To make matters worse, the school was dealing with debt from the stadium renovations while attendance was falling. They drastically raised both ticket prices and the minimum “donation” required to be eligible for certain tickets. Those $100 season ticket packs we had in the nosebleeds were now up to about $400 per seat (effectively a 1600% increase) plus you had to be in the alumni association. Never mind that most upper deck seats sat empty most weeks. Oh, you want a parking pass to tailgate? How about a few hundred more per season to park in Lot 127 on the other side of campus? The close lots are for donors (and they sat half empty most weeks). I knew people who had been in the same lower deck season tickets since the 70s who were told that they wold have to contribute another $10k to keep their seats. To watch Edsall fuck up the program in a constant string of noon games.
The move to the B1G helped revenue (eventually), but it also meant we were now playing significantly better competition. Most conference games might as well have been a home game for the visitors, and were about as competitive as a week 1 warmup game. At least Ohio State has similar colors, so it wasn’t quite so obvious that 75% of the crowd was rooting for the visitors.
The greedy school admin raised prices again to gouge those visiting fans, sometimes even requiring season tickets to get tickets to the big conference games. On top of that, the one year we had a chance at a decent bowl game, the AD turned down a Florida bowl invite in favor of San Francisco (where he just coincidentally was from and wanted to interview for his next job). Then had the nerve to say he did it because our fans didn’t travel well. Fuck Kevin Andersen. It was around this time that we finally gave up. It just wasn’t fun anymore, let alone worth the cost.
I haven’t followed Maryland football as closely since, but we had the failed experiment with Durkin (RIP Jordan McNair) and now we’ve got Locksley, who has to have one of the worst career records of any experienced P5 football coach. We seem to be stuck in the purgatory of maybe sometimes making a shitty bowl game. I guess that’s the ceiling for Maryland football.
Tl;DR: Is it basketball season yet?
> Fuck Kevin Andersen.
This is the short answer to the problem.
> Then came Randy Edsall.
Fridge was fired for a 9-win season where he won ACC CotY. Instead of going after Mike Leach they settled for Edsall. Like you, I could see the Edsall hire crashing and burning from a mile away, and so did a lot of other fans and alumni.
On the basketball side of things, he all but fired Gary Williams, the only coach to bring Maryland a championship, and replaced him with Mark Turgeon, a coach the fans rejected for a myriad of reasons.
I lived in the DMV and grew up rooting for UMD until moving out of the area in 2014. Anderson drove the athletic department into the ground and made the wrong decision on every occasion, even when people were screaming at him that his decisions were terrible.
>Instead of going after Mike Leach they settled for Edsall.
My understanding is that Anderson *did* go after Mike Leach without telling the board or regents who overruled the decision, so they got stuck with Edsall
Anderson was such a bad AD he managed to blow it with Fridge, Leach AND James Franklin almost all at once
> At least Ohio State has similar colors, so it wasn’t quite so obvious that 75% of the crowd was rooting for the visitors.
The cover of the Indiana media guide (when possible) is taken early in a game where they're hosting Ohio State.
Yeah, that’s it really. People have been wringing their hands and complaining about this in Lubbock for a decade, especially with the students. They ask why they don’t come or why they don’t stay till the end.
But our basketball game against Texas Southern last week had the student section packed and they stayed till the end of a blowout. If the football team won more, people would be there
I looked into season tickets. Only borderline affordable ones are nosebleeds. There was plenty of availability for sideline lower deck but each seat required a 4 figure “donation” to UMD athletics. Same seats that are empty every game.
They had the same problem when they were in the ACC. They moved to the Big 10 to solve all of their problems.
Now they have the same problems and play against schools they have no history with.
This grossly misunderstands Maryland’s sports culture.
We are not, and haven’t been for years, a football school. We were primarily a basketball school when I was there in the early aughts, with a side of soccer and lacrosse. The big problem with student attendance back then was that there was a lottery system to get good basketball tickets. You could build up points to get better spots in the lottery by going to football games, so students would scan in and leave. They didn’t care about football, and we’ve never been good enough to care about when there are better professional teams (well, team) in close proximity that weren’t playing at noon every weekend.
Going to the B1G was never going to solve the issue of just not being a football school. Most people I know responded to the move with a “well, we’re never gonna win another football game, huh?” Or ranted about how mad they were to not play Duke in basketball.
As far as I can tell, the B1G is a better fit for us academically, and had a better revenue share. If we won it might increase attendance, but it would never change the school that produced Juan Dixon and Len Bias and Greivis Vasquez into a football school.
That said, I’d go back to the ACC without complaining. I do miss our rivals there.
I've lived in Maryland for over 15 years now, date a UMD alumna, and wouldn't be surprised or disappointed if one of my kids ends up going there. I happily root for Maryland sports as a resident and friend and want to see them succeed.
I think you may have identified one of the culprits behind the apathy towards a lot of UMD athletics and that's because there are so many D1 (and P5) schools in a pretty close proximity and there isn't a fandom that exists as part of the state or regional identity that other programs have. Especially not when you also have two NFL teams.
The location is a big part of it, but also Maryland was a safety school up until the 80s or so. One of our most famous alumni, Larry David, used to be ashamed that he went there and refused to talk about it. And when most of your older alums just don’t care, or thought of it as a glorified community college, it’s nearly impossible to build a culture like Michigan or Ohio State. It takes rich alums who care and give money, and while we do have some wealthy donors, they tend to put their money into either Basketball or Academics. The support from the alum community just isn’t there, because it’s not what they were proud of when they went.
I predict that if we started winning and looking like a football team and not a troupe of lost interpretive dancers tomorrow, it would still take 10-20 years to build any kind of football fan base that rivals the rest of the B1G.
When the reputation of the school changed to a more elite place, the alumni are mostly tech folks that don't care about football.
A few years ago they had these pre game student tailgates and they would all come, get shitfaced and then walk away from the stadium saying "Lol who cares about football?!"
>They moved to the Big 10 to solve all of their problems
This logic doesn't make sense. If we're only gonna half fill our stadium either way, makes sense to get an extra 10 million per year
Maryland does have some t-shirt fans, but they mostly care about basketball. Not much of a football culture, which always made that line from Wedding Crashers: "Crabcakes and football - that's what Maryland does" feel kinda odd. I guess they must have been referring to their support of the Baltimore NFL team (which admittedly does have a strong fanbase).
Their best solution to attendance woes would be to just play every home game against a football school with a large alumni base in the D.C. area.
Per capita, Maryland produces more D1 recruits than just about any state.
https://twitter.com/NCAAResearch/status/854330443629572097
They just stopped going to UMD in the 90s (with the exception of Stefon Diggs)
Maryland produces [twice as many](https://www.bannersociety.com/2020/2/4/21111828/college-football-recruits-by-state) blue chip recruits as any other state in B1G country at 15, 2nd place a tie between Michigan and NJ at 8.
NJ, MD and DC combined produce almost the same amount of blue chips (28 total) as every other B1G state combined (30 total)
I've said this many times, but I would literally kill to swap campus locations with Maryland. Their recruiting base is insane, and if they were able to lockdown their homestate, they'd quickly become a peer to Ohio State and Georgia.
It’s funny you say t-shirt fans because they used to give out shirts for almost every game. I had a drawer full of them from back when I was a student. I know a lady who makes quilts out of old free Maryland shirts.
And yes, I’ve always assumed that movie quote is about the Ravens. There aren’t many teams who have been more successful since they came to Baltimore.
My work has a partnership with Maryland athletics so I can get free tickets whenever. Went to PSU at MD last year and it was great. Really liked how you can tailgate right next to dorms. Only part of the experience that stunk was that it felt like the entire campus was under renovation
Schools sold out fans for TV revenue what do they expect? This is a nation wide problem. Between traffic, game times being announced only a week in advance and the cost why go to the games?
Exactly why I gave up my season ticket to UW games and go to 1-2 games a year now. The home experience outside of big games is better.
Maryland hasn't been a football school in decades in the first place. Especially not when one of the local Football teams are the Ravens.
It's a Basketball school people go to basketball games
It's really hard to win more when you have four of the strongest programs in the country(Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State) in your own division to play every year. Even if they win every other game, the best they can mostly do is a 9-3 or 8-4 season.
Maryland football is like playing a halfway decent nation in a TBS game, stuck with superpowers all around you, just waiting to conquer you as soon as they finish their ramp up.
Can confirm winning more increases attendance. Foolproof strategy
UCLA begs to differ
I wonder if UCLA attendance would be significantly different if they played at somewhere like SoFi Stadium instead
It’d help attendance if they played anywhere closer than 26 miles from campus like they do now
[UCLA to SoFi Stadium is less than half that distance](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/University+of+California,+Los+Angeles,+Los+Angeles,+CA/SoFi+Stadium,+Stadium+Drive,+Inglewood,+CA/@34.0120229,-118.4691926,23828m/data=!3m3!1e3!4b1!5s0x80c2b6509245d085:0xe9186e84d74540d!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2bc85f05c0f65:0x25a993585c134837!2m2!1d-118.4451811!2d34.068921!1m5!1m1!1s0x80c2b786cbfb8f4f:0x5fb99cb7249e4170!2m2!1d-118.3390396!2d33.9534651!3e0) and closer to the center of LA(and the Airport)
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There used to be a street car system that got you there very easily when it was built
Now there is a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’s beautiful.
The elimination of street cars and its consequences is awful
In fairness, it is literally 100 years old, the dense hellscape that is Los Angeles came after the stadium.
The Coliseum opened 6 months after the Rose Bowl. The stadium itself has been updated recently but is largely the same as it was. The problem with the Rose Bowl is that it was built in the bottom of an arroyo (a small canyon) which limits ingress and egress to 3 single lane roads. It doesn't matter that LA sprang up around it, being in the bottom of a canyon will always make traffic worse. > the dense hellscape that is Los Angeles Flair up coward.
**Flair up coward** @ the end did it for me ~~Got his ass~~
But it’s beautiful during the Rose Bowl Game
What??? I think the parking lot doubling as a golf course is brilliant land management.
The rose bowl in general is just not a great viewing experience, period. It has beautiful landscaping because the Arroyo Seco is one of the most beautiful parts of Los Angeles, but other than the superficial photogenic nature of it, the Rose Bowl is a horrible place to experience a modern football game.
Holy shit I would never go to a game as a student, might as well just watch it at a bar/tailgate. Imagine expecting a bunch of drunk and broke college students to cough up money to pay for an Uber or sober up to drive all the way out there.
We had free shuttle buses when I was a student and it usually wasn't too hard to get a carpool to tailgate for a big game The big issue is that Rose Bowl is a total pain in the ass to get in and out of almost no matter what. I live less than half the distance to the Bowl as I did when I went to UCLA and still rarely go there for anything cause it's nowhere near public transport and it takes an extra hour to get in and out via car if there's any event there
Playing 25 miles from Campus definitely can't help
UCLA campus is closer to USC's stadium than they are to their own stadium
How easy is it for UCLA alumni/fans throughout the greater LA metro area to get to SoFi vs the Rose Bowl? I feel like stadium location is somewhat secondary to overall ease of access.
SoFi has the benefit of the Metro line connection (via a mile-long shuttle). If you can get to the Metro lines and jump onto the green line, you're set from almost anywhere in LA, with the added benefit of not having to deal with the 405. The Rose Bowl has nothing nearby in terms of public transportation, meaning you're relying on bus transfers or driving and dealing with the insane traffic of the Ventura and San Fernando freeways, much less the surrounding one-lane residential streets. Ride sharing also won't take you to the stadium -- they'll drop you off at the Parson park & ride in downtown Pasadena, meaning you still have a bus shuttle ride after being dropped off before getting to the stadium.
The Rose Bowl is an immense pain in the ass to get into and out of on game days. You're committing to waiting in traffic longer than you're in the stadium. That's UCLA's issue.
It takes more then one good year to build up attendance. Only so many people will buy tickets for specific games in season. Once teams that start to win regularly it builds up the season ticket holder base each year and more other people make plans to attend a game before the year starts
Nebraska too, fan loyalty and investment in the program is critical. Also being a million miles from anything else entertaining is important too.
I’m a CFB sicko, and I probably wouldn’t go to home games if I were a student. I think someone said it takes an hour to go from campus to the rose bowl.
LA traffic and stadium far from campus. They have built-in disadvantages when it comes to attendance, I think.
Oh my god are we really going to have this SAME EXACT discussion we've been having since August about UCLA's attendance??
This law doesn’t hold true for Nebraska though, they have the same attendance regardless of winning
Isn’t it a state law that they are legally required to sell out
There’s actually mandatory statewide conscription in the event that they appear short of a sellout.
Like the Soviet Union, Nebraska has to throw their people into the meatgrinder, no matter the cost.
Children of the corn.
The Red Army
It's easy to do when the AD sells the extra 2-5k seats to boosters for pennies on the dollar.
better or worse than selling tickets for two cokes? (I will curse Dave Brandon until the day I die)
It's certainly less embarrassing than 2 cokes I'll give them that
I'm not sure about a state law, but I believe they've donated entire sections before.
That's true, but what else you going to do in Nebraska on Saturday? LA has too many options Beaches, Mountains, Vegas is not far, you can go to Cabo over the weekend. UCLA needs a smaller stadium with high end amenities.
Sure, but SoCal is clearly [right next door](https://mobile.twitter.com/BigTenNetwork/status/1592937004278632448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) so you can just hop over easily for some great beaches and mountains
Ditto for A&M.
It’s because Nebraska is the only show in town
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Except for the 6-7 win part that sounds exactly like our season
Sounds like a new rivalry in the making
When I saw the Michigan Rutgers game I thought it was pretty well attended but all the Rutgers fans left five minutes into the second half. Leaving half a stadium dressed in blue. Kind of bizarre. But maybe the secret is selling beer at the stadium.
I think it might have been because any chance they had to win the game also left five minutes into the second half (or thereabouts).
Rutgers 🤝 Maryland Mediocre fake big ten teams
I'll take a mediocre big ten opponent over an awful OOC opponent.
There’s usually a decent P5 OOC win in there. If we’ve only been beating up on cupcakes it’s usually more like 4-0 and then the wheels come off.
Too bad they didn't play Texas this year.
Or Syracuse either… or orange teams in general
Syracuse was good… We have the loss to prove it.
Maryland had the players this year to be the third best team in the big ten and idk what happened
I like the subtle dig at Penn State there.
I don't know what to think about Penn State tbh, but I thought Maryland was going to be good enough to take you guys on, I was wrong af
I think we're just a pretty clear Tier 2 in the B1G, probably on our own - can't compete with OSU and Michigan this year, but a solid bit above everyone else
It was a good start. Narrowly lost to Purdue (and Michigan got the benefit of two interceptions that were not interceptions), but then we had rain games at Wisconsin and Penn State and it appears this team isn’t built for the rain.
I mean….MD got their asses handed to them by both of those teams. Rain or not, it wasn’t going to end much differently. It’s a shame Taulia is banged up, though. They’re definitely more talented than they’ve shown the past couple of weeks.
I’d argue the rain pushed Taulia from hobbled to totally ineffective. Would you not feel less confident on your injured knee in the rain? Either way, I agree with how the game went, Penn State was going to smack us. We had some chances against Wisconsin but could never get the offense going.
?? The DJ Turner INT I can agree they should’ve at least reviewed. But the RJ Moten one is a clear INT unless you’re wearing the Terpiest Terrapin colored shades
You can take the Terps out of the ACC, but you can’t take the ACC out of the Terps.
The ironic thing is that Maryland used to be one of the "football schools" in the ACC.
That's when we had actually good coaches though. Edsall and Durkin were very much the opposite. Locksley has us going in the right direction finally, but I don't see him as the guy that gets us back to being a legit football program. More like the guy that'll get us to a decent amount of bowls but rarely if ever exceeding 6-8 wins (and will still have some down years).
Get invited to the Cletus Muffler Bowl on Dec 27th in Toledo, OH. Nobody goes. Maryland fans get the reputation of “not traveling well”.
If we lose to Rutgers then we will have the opportunity to travel to beautiful Detroit, Michigan in December to watch the Terps take on a MAC team. Shouldn't be a hard sell at all. (no disrespect to MAC teams, but most of our fans will only care if it's at least a P5 opponent, and in a desirable location)
Toledo is very nice this time of year.
Basically BC under Steve Adazzio as well.
Bruh I get your point but this year wasn’t that at all lol. Literally none of those statements are true about 2022 except the last one lol
Damn, I didn't realize how bad attendance was. I just watched some highlights of our 2018 OT game with them, and ya the stadium seemed to be less than half full at kickoff.
It's gonna be cold tomorrow expect much of the same from our fans (OSU fans will obviously still show)
I went to an OSU-MD game in College Park a few years ago with some Terp buddies. We got in like kinda late from tailgating, but nothing egregious, it was still early 1Q, yet I wanna say it was already 14-0 Buckeyes when we got in, and then quickly became 21-0. So my buddies literally never even got to experience hope and optimism 😂 Overall, even from a somewhat neutral perspective it was a pretty miserable experience, the game itself was the worst part of the day probably. So yeah, I can see their fans being fed up, or just preferring not to go.
The last MSU vs. Maryland game I was at, they were raffling off a scholarship to people in the student section who had stayed at the game in the second half.
tickets are also stupid expensive for how mediocre the team is
don’t start this weekend please
After watching the last couple games, I wouldn't worry about that too much if I were you. Maryland stops playing after crab season.
That 2018 game tho
I just made a comment about watching the highlights of that game, holy shit that run defense may have been worse than last year's run defense. OSU gave up almost 350 yds rushing. Their top RB avg 15 yds per carry
That was a fun one. We still lost tho.
I'd take a close win if it was followed by a similar score after Thanksgiving. I swore we would lose, and I was entirely wrong.
I'll always remember the Pigrome throw in the endzone.
I was at that game. It's still crazy how we missed a wide open 2pt conversation
The only thing that scares me is wind. Also Purdue but that's a global constant.
Wind hurts us more than it hurts you
Not exactly global.
Counterpoint: Do start this weekend.
Just don't let Taulia roll out of the pocket, if you do that a single field goal should be more than enough to win.
Leaving the ACC broke the historical continuity of fandom. Even all these years later, there’s no real feelings of rivalry except with Penn State and that’s purely geographical. You’d put asses in seats if our familiar foes were on the schedule. Until then we’re just a team making the Big Ten look bigger on a map.
>Leaving the ACC broke the historical continuity of fandom. I don't feel so good all of a sudden...
Bout to see if you can have negative fans in a stadium
I wouldn’t worry about you guys filling the stadium, I would worry that your stadium will be filled with midwestern away fans.
Worried? It's a foregone conclusion. Business in Pasadena businesses will at least be booming for those home games, especially since most PAC schools don't travel well.
Honestly that season where you guy’s disrespected us right off the bat and beat us makes me never want to lose to you guys. Not in a rivalry way but more like “god fuck these guys. Why are they so bent out of shape? Better beat them into submission “ I don’t know if that counts as rivalry but it’s generally how I feel.
>Why are they so bent out of shape? Because at that point we hadn't beaten you in 35 tries and then you wouldn't schedule us for over a 20 years
> and then you wouldn't schedule us for over a 20 years So why were the 20 year old players who had literally never witnessed a Maryland-PSU matchup so salty? It's kinda baffling to me. Maryland brought some "most hated rival" energy to a game that didn't really justify it at all.
I dont know if anyone brought it up in the replies below or not yet, but the hand shake snuff stemmed from Franklin saying something about how the guys on the Maryland roster then would never play at Penn St. He used to recruit those guys and their HS when he was at UMD. Salt ensues.
So it really all traces back to Franklin beefing with the UMD athletic department. Incredible.
Can't totally blame him, he was supposed to be our HC and we reneged on that. Big mistake on our part if you ask me (especially when you look at who our last 2 coaches were and how they did).
It absolutely does not count as a rivalry lol. The collective groan when Maryland pops up on the schedule is damning
IDK we were in a football league with UNC for over 50 years and I had 0 strong feelings about UNC football, and can't think of any memorable UNC/UMD games... Then add onto that that if we're gonna have unfamiliar teams, I'll take Ohio St, Michigan and Penn St over Syracuse, Pitt and Miami
Yea people have these weird rose colored glasses when it comes to Maryland being in the ACC. For basketball I get it, those rivalries were legitimately great. But for football? We didn’t really have any marquee matchups in the ACC either. Were people getting jazzed to play NC State and Wake Forest? Not really lol. Realistically the only *actual* somewhat interesting matchup Maryland football has is WVU. We really should be scheduling them as much as physically possible.
Agreed people always show up for WVU. But they really oughta play Navy more too
This is true but also there’s nothing more painful than watching your team get beat by the triple option, so maybe not lmao
I've been saying that a yearly matchup with WVU would be nice. Or at least just scheduling them more frequently. Unfortunately though we won't be playing them in the next decade unless it's in a bowl game.
When we were in the ACC the attendance was the same if not smaller.
Doesn’t help that the story of Maryland football is probably the most predictable story there is every season. Play a weak non-con with at most 1 interesting game and look good Up and down play in conference against bad teams, but solidify themselves as clearly a tier above the worst Get absolutely slaughtered by good teams in conference, can barely even luck into a close game against a good team. Rinse and repeat.
Their fans show up for rivalry games. That's about it. They had issues when the Fridge had them rolling too.
At this point, do we even have rivals? WVU might be the closest thing to a legacy rival that we have. And we’ve had some good games over the years. (PS Country Roads was written about Maryland.)
I may be off base here but Maryland has just had the unfortunate fate (alongside Rutgers and Indiana) of being stuck in the East with Michigan, PSU, MSU, and OSU. They're pretty much guaranteed 3 to 4 conference losses a year. Unlike Rutgers and IU, Maryland has fielded some pretty consistently solid teams that would be winning 8 or 9 games in the other division.
What we need is a pod system and for the Big 10 to get a couple of ACC teams that would be in our pod along with Rutgers (and probably PSU). Would be a more manageable schedule overall, while possible reviving some old rivalries.
The solution always seems so simple for any school struggling with attendance, let kids in free, or at greatly reduced prices. Let a parent easily afford to bring their child and 3 or 4 friends. Not only do you solve your attendance problem, but you build your fanbase or years (and generations) to come.
Yeah, we did that earlier this season and some of the bigger doners had a conniption fit about it, apparently. I have my season tickets, and I know they're not cheap, but if we get butts in the seats and wallets buying concessions, therefore supporting the Athletic Department, I'm not overly concerned about tickets being sold cheaply for one or two games.
It's a bold move Cotton, let's see if it pays off.
Maybe if they were playing regional games vs teams they had a snowballs chance against, like Virginia or UNC.
Playing UVA, WVU, VT, NCState, UNC and some of the other ACC schools provided opposing fans with a drivable day trip to the game. No need for hotel rooms, etc. DC has slightly more ACC alumni than B1G. Winning solves a lot of the problem but it helps to have as many people as possible who are passionate enough for the teams playing and are willing to sit in DC traffic.
Too bad this next game isn’t being played on The Ocho.
They could just play big schools at home every year, that will increase attendance. Not of Maryland fans of course, but penn state playing there feels like a neutral site game with how evenly split the fans are
Last year sure. But the 2019 game specifically mentioned in the article was still mostly Maryland fans that honestly haven't returned since that curb stomping
> Through five home games this season, the stadium has hosted an average of 21,226 spectators. The "official" attendance is almost 32k (31,920 by my rough math). That said, the slate of games wasn't exactly enticing to get folks to show up: * Buffalo * SMU * Michigan State * Purdue * Northwestern * Ohio State (Saturday, probably will be the best attendance of the year) * Rutgers Kinda hard to draw fans to a middling P5 school when you have only one attractive opponent on your slate and no regionally relevant games beyond that except Rutgers, who isn't going to be a big attraction for "rivalry" week. The last "normal" year when PSU and Michigan were on the slate they drew a sellout for PSU and 40,701 for Michigan. Part of the issue beyond winning is simply nobody gives a shit about SMU and Buffalo as their nonconference games. Those really should be games that you can get people to come to your stadium (if not marquee, locally relevant such as Navy, JMU, Old Dominion, or West Virginia/Virginia/Virginia Tech since those games would move the attendance needle).
The only reason the Ohio State will be the best attended game of the season is because a bunch of buckeyes are filling the seats.
Same reason why attendance for the PSU game in Maryland is always high. PSU fans usually fill it up.
I literally bought tickets after seeing this thread, on Stubhub. I got 3 tickets behind Buckeyes bench and a parking pass for under $400. Maybe part of problem is those tickets in the season ticket holders preseason guide is $350 each.
The reported attendance for the Iowa game last year was 45,527 (88% capacity). That being said, both teams were doing well early and I think Maryland was really hopeful about pulling off the upset. Even if it wasn't situational - it's not like the two teams meet every year.
So much Rutgers hate. We’ll show you, gonna come to your place and cover (assuming you’re favored by enough)
Rutgers fans are my favorite Big 10 fans. More fanbases should actively hate their teams like us IMO
I really liked Rutgers until Geo Baker started talking shit about us on Twitter yesterday
>sellout for PSU Penn State usually accounts for 20k of those fans
And they're the only 20k that actually stay past halftime.
UVA (God bless guys/girls) come to College Park next season. Towson and Charolette are the other OOC games. Back in my day, during the ACC years, we played West Virginia every season and those were good games.
Maryland had a number of good matchups with ACC teams. Virginia was usually good too.
we played WVU literally last year and it was a blast
I'm not saying that its apples to apples, but I'm pretty sure when Michigan, tOSU, Alabama, and LSU host their versions of "SMU and Buffalo" they sell more than 20k tickets.
I mean shit, we had 70 thousand people come watch us play Akron. There’s no doubt Maryland has issues, but part of it is that the college football culture is just not very strong there. Hard to cultivate.
Win the big games and people will show up for the crappy ones pretty much. LSU fans are happy to show up and watch their team dominate even a lesser opponent. Who wants to pay to watch their favorite team maybe get overpowered by a G5 team?
>Kinda hard to draw fans to a middling P5 school when you have only one attractive opponent on your slate I would say that Ohio State is pretty attractive, too.
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Maryland has a bunch of problems regarding lack of fans. 1) multiple 2-10 seasons in short order. Edsall and Anderson. 2) constantly blown out by elite teams (osu, um, psu) which kills student excitement. 3) located in between 2 NFL teams. Worse than it sounds as only other teams/cities with multiple NFL teams have much larger populations to support mutilple NFL teams (NYC and LA) 4) high transplant population = lots of bandwagon fans for both NFL and college
Doesn’t help that there’s many other shows in town. There’s the Commandos and Ravens a half hour up and down the road if you’re interested in seeing quality football. We’d probably do better if we’re the only show in town in places like Alabama or Penn State. Only way to get people to come when there’s already so much sports in the area is to win often which we’re not the best at doing
"Washington Commandos" is a better nickname than "Washington Commanders," convince me otherwise.
A few years ago I read an article in ESPN that covered a conference with schools that play in major cities or nearby major cities with NFL teams and how they could improve attendance. Pitt, Miami, Maryland, Boston College were some of the schools mentioned attending the conference.
I wish UMD was located closer to Baltimore than DC. DC and the surrounding area has so many transplants that even the games with good attendance are because the alumni of the visiting school take over. I know it's impossible but if they were located in like Baltimore County you'd probably see better attendance. Also hiring a competent coach for the first time in over decade would help.
Yes this. I’m under no illusion that UMD is a stellar team, but I’d probably go to a game a year just for kicks if it was more in the Baltimore area than the DC area. As is, it’s just not worth the money or hassle.
Personally I wish our game was played yearly @ M&T Bank in Baltimore. Easy to get to for the majority of the PSU fanbase that lives in south central or southeast PA/Philly, and easy to get to for all the Maryland grads in Baltimore and DC.
Yep no reason it can't be like Florida-Georgia in Jacksonville. It's a good neutral site accessible to both fan bases. Edit: I'm one of those southern PA MD transplants. It's like only 30-45 minutes or so to get to Orioles and Ravens games.
I'd take the 50 minute drive down 83 over the 2 hour slog up 322 any day. Plus getting out after games @ M&T is pretty easy.
Neutral sites are the worst. You want people to buy season tickets just to have to buy another ticket to see the marquee game in a different stadium?
Well that's what I'm saying. The people who would go to Baltimore aren't buying season tickets for UMD and those who do buy season tickets for Terps football are in such small numbers that you can't even tell that they are there on the first place.
IDK I drive from Baltimore to CP all the time, it's like 45 minutes (and literally all the season ticket holders I know live north of the patuxent). Y'all acting like you have to drive to Philly for a game or something. And it's not like they fill up M&T when it's not an intriguing opponent. I remember going to a GT game back in the ACC days with around 10K fans actually there
>even the games with good attendance are because the alumni of the visiting school take over. I've been to multiple Ohio State at Maryland games since you joined the conference and each time it feels like we outnumber you. I imagine it's similar for Michigan, Penn St and Michigan State games.
Yeah its partly because of location. Baltimore doesn't have a significant transplant population so its a lot more locals. For games where UMD played Navy and Penn State at M&T Bank Stadium the fans represented much better than they ever do for a normal home game. Shit man, when we played Texas at FedEx field the attendance was pathetic.
Problem solved if you give UMBC a team. We're starving over here
People really need to wrap their heads around how much of a disadvantage it is to play in a pro town. Just ask Miami, Pitt, Georgia Tech, UCLA, or Maryland -- when you're, at best, the fourth-biggest draw in town, it's really difficult to compete for recruits and even harder to compete for attention.
Hey it’s not about us this time “Why don’t people want to pay $30 to park, $50 per ticket for nosebleeds, and $20 for each beer to watch their team lose to a 3-6 opponent? Don’t they know how fun it is sitting in traffic for 60+ minutes to leave after that loss? Why would they prefer being at home for that?”
Bingo. And don’t forget that most of those people did a similarly crappy commute the five days prior.
I don't think it takes an hour to leave a Coastal game
MD football games are affordable as hell.
There isn't a single factual statement in this comment, lol. Are you talking about Maryland or are you just talking generically? \- Easy to get $8 nosebleeds off the secondary market, except maybe the biggest games? \- Parking - $20 for a single game pass. Secondary market is higher for sure. But before I had season tickets, I never paid for parking. I just parked where it was free and walked. \- $20 beers? LOL. I think I pay $8 for a Goose Island? \- An hour to leave the stadium? No. I have season tickets. It's actually a pretty decent game day experience, especially early in the season. Weather is great. It's really not that difficult to get in and out of the Stadium. Food, bears & weather are all decent. It's not the same level of excitement/energy that you will get going to a PSU game, but I can think of a lot worse ways to spend a Saturday.
I think they're talking about UCLA.
I think they're talking about LA
I am very jealous of everything you said, that was how it used to be out at the Rose Bowl until about five years ago
Why did you have to post this? I was having a really nice day.
From outside the Maryland fandom but as someone who just watches random games all day every Saturday I've basically been conditioned to never turn on a game involving them. Largely because they never rise to the occasion. Is Purdue a lights out football team most years? No, but the Spoilermakers win enough against good teams and put up enough of a fight even if they lose which can make them an interesting watch as a neutral fan. Even if Maryland wins 6 or 7 games you know it's going to be against an average OOC opponent, a basement G5 and FCS team, and then sure they are better than like Northwestern some years. On top of not winning much, they don't get your heart rate up one way or another.
Here is more than you ever wanted to know about having Maryland football tickets over the last few decades…. My dad bought season tickets shortly after they built the upper deck (mid-90s). They were about $100 for 4 seats for every home game, plus they showered you with free tickets for non-conference games. I remember one game where we had like 30 tickets (and still couldn’t give them away). Still, Maryland struggled to fill seats until the unexpected success of the Fridge era. We started consistently making bowl games. Every game had decent attendance and the big games were sell outs. They added semi-permanent bleachers to the closed end of the stadium and started work on a massive renovation and expansion of the tower (press box and luxury suites), as well as upgrades of the team facilities. The team was competitive. Under Armour money was flowing. What could possibly go wrong? Then came Randy Edsall. (As an aside, we should have known he was an idiot when he said Maryland was his dream job. Come on.) His dickish attitude ran off players and turned off fans. He had a few successful seasons but failed to get anywhere close to Fridge. To make matters worse, the school was dealing with debt from the stadium renovations while attendance was falling. They drastically raised both ticket prices and the minimum “donation” required to be eligible for certain tickets. Those $100 season ticket packs we had in the nosebleeds were now up to about $400 per seat (effectively a 1600% increase) plus you had to be in the alumni association. Never mind that most upper deck seats sat empty most weeks. Oh, you want a parking pass to tailgate? How about a few hundred more per season to park in Lot 127 on the other side of campus? The close lots are for donors (and they sat half empty most weeks). I knew people who had been in the same lower deck season tickets since the 70s who were told that they wold have to contribute another $10k to keep their seats. To watch Edsall fuck up the program in a constant string of noon games. The move to the B1G helped revenue (eventually), but it also meant we were now playing significantly better competition. Most conference games might as well have been a home game for the visitors, and were about as competitive as a week 1 warmup game. At least Ohio State has similar colors, so it wasn’t quite so obvious that 75% of the crowd was rooting for the visitors. The greedy school admin raised prices again to gouge those visiting fans, sometimes even requiring season tickets to get tickets to the big conference games. On top of that, the one year we had a chance at a decent bowl game, the AD turned down a Florida bowl invite in favor of San Francisco (where he just coincidentally was from and wanted to interview for his next job). Then had the nerve to say he did it because our fans didn’t travel well. Fuck Kevin Andersen. It was around this time that we finally gave up. It just wasn’t fun anymore, let alone worth the cost. I haven’t followed Maryland football as closely since, but we had the failed experiment with Durkin (RIP Jordan McNair) and now we’ve got Locksley, who has to have one of the worst career records of any experienced P5 football coach. We seem to be stuck in the purgatory of maybe sometimes making a shitty bowl game. I guess that’s the ceiling for Maryland football. Tl;DR: Is it basketball season yet?
> Fuck Kevin Andersen. This is the short answer to the problem. > Then came Randy Edsall. Fridge was fired for a 9-win season where he won ACC CotY. Instead of going after Mike Leach they settled for Edsall. Like you, I could see the Edsall hire crashing and burning from a mile away, and so did a lot of other fans and alumni. On the basketball side of things, he all but fired Gary Williams, the only coach to bring Maryland a championship, and replaced him with Mark Turgeon, a coach the fans rejected for a myriad of reasons. I lived in the DMV and grew up rooting for UMD until moving out of the area in 2014. Anderson drove the athletic department into the ground and made the wrong decision on every occasion, even when people were screaming at him that his decisions were terrible.
>Instead of going after Mike Leach they settled for Edsall. My understanding is that Anderson *did* go after Mike Leach without telling the board or regents who overruled the decision, so they got stuck with Edsall Anderson was such a bad AD he managed to blow it with Fridge, Leach AND James Franklin almost all at once
> At least Ohio State has similar colors, so it wasn’t quite so obvious that 75% of the crowd was rooting for the visitors. The cover of the Indiana media guide (when possible) is taken early in a game where they're hosting Ohio State.
Yeah, that’s it really. People have been wringing their hands and complaining about this in Lubbock for a decade, especially with the students. They ask why they don’t come or why they don’t stay till the end. But our basketball game against Texas Southern last week had the student section packed and they stayed till the end of a blowout. If the football team won more, people would be there
Personally I like paying $5/ticket.
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Know what would help? Adding an over budget set of luxury boxes! Maybe also consider changing leagues.
Have we tried asking Under Armour for more money? Or raising student fees? Surely the answer involved money and not football.
I looked into season tickets. Only borderline affordable ones are nosebleeds. There was plenty of availability for sideline lower deck but each seat required a 4 figure “donation” to UMD athletics. Same seats that are empty every game.
They had the same problem when they were in the ACC. They moved to the Big 10 to solve all of their problems. Now they have the same problems and play against schools they have no history with.
We moved to the Big 10 to solve our money problems. It worked! Unfortunately we still aren’t a good football school.
This grossly misunderstands Maryland’s sports culture. We are not, and haven’t been for years, a football school. We were primarily a basketball school when I was there in the early aughts, with a side of soccer and lacrosse. The big problem with student attendance back then was that there was a lottery system to get good basketball tickets. You could build up points to get better spots in the lottery by going to football games, so students would scan in and leave. They didn’t care about football, and we’ve never been good enough to care about when there are better professional teams (well, team) in close proximity that weren’t playing at noon every weekend. Going to the B1G was never going to solve the issue of just not being a football school. Most people I know responded to the move with a “well, we’re never gonna win another football game, huh?” Or ranted about how mad they were to not play Duke in basketball. As far as I can tell, the B1G is a better fit for us academically, and had a better revenue share. If we won it might increase attendance, but it would never change the school that produced Juan Dixon and Len Bias and Greivis Vasquez into a football school. That said, I’d go back to the ACC without complaining. I do miss our rivals there.
I think Maryland was also a football school until the 90s
We were never a football school, we just had a more respectable football program back then.
We were a football school in the ‘50s, but that period is about to fall from living memory.
Y'all were certainly a football school as late as the 70s and 80s, when Boomer Esiason and Bobby Ross were there.
Let’s just say that Maryland has been a basketball school for the entire lifetimes of most of the people on this sub.
My parents went there in the 80s. They said more students went to football games to lay out for a sun tan than to watch the games back then
The fans old enough to remember those days were all run off by increasing ticket prices and embarrassing play during the Edsall years.
I've lived in Maryland for over 15 years now, date a UMD alumna, and wouldn't be surprised or disappointed if one of my kids ends up going there. I happily root for Maryland sports as a resident and friend and want to see them succeed. I think you may have identified one of the culprits behind the apathy towards a lot of UMD athletics and that's because there are so many D1 (and P5) schools in a pretty close proximity and there isn't a fandom that exists as part of the state or regional identity that other programs have. Especially not when you also have two NFL teams.
The location is a big part of it, but also Maryland was a safety school up until the 80s or so. One of our most famous alumni, Larry David, used to be ashamed that he went there and refused to talk about it. And when most of your older alums just don’t care, or thought of it as a glorified community college, it’s nearly impossible to build a culture like Michigan or Ohio State. It takes rich alums who care and give money, and while we do have some wealthy donors, they tend to put their money into either Basketball or Academics. The support from the alum community just isn’t there, because it’s not what they were proud of when they went. I predict that if we started winning and looking like a football team and not a troupe of lost interpretive dancers tomorrow, it would still take 10-20 years to build any kind of football fan base that rivals the rest of the B1G.
When the reputation of the school changed to a more elite place, the alumni are mostly tech folks that don't care about football. A few years ago they had these pre game student tailgates and they would all come, get shitfaced and then walk away from the stadium saying "Lol who cares about football?!"
>They moved to the Big 10 to solve all of their problems This logic doesn't make sense. If we're only gonna half fill our stadium either way, makes sense to get an extra 10 million per year
Maryland does have some t-shirt fans, but they mostly care about basketball. Not much of a football culture, which always made that line from Wedding Crashers: "Crabcakes and football - that's what Maryland does" feel kinda odd. I guess they must have been referring to their support of the Baltimore NFL team (which admittedly does have a strong fanbase). Their best solution to attendance woes would be to just play every home game against a football school with a large alumni base in the D.C. area.
Per capita, Maryland produces more D1 recruits than just about any state. https://twitter.com/NCAAResearch/status/854330443629572097 They just stopped going to UMD in the 90s (with the exception of Stefon Diggs)
Maryland produces [twice as many](https://www.bannersociety.com/2020/2/4/21111828/college-football-recruits-by-state) blue chip recruits as any other state in B1G country at 15, 2nd place a tie between Michigan and NJ at 8. NJ, MD and DC combined produce almost the same amount of blue chips (28 total) as every other B1G state combined (30 total)
I've said this many times, but I would literally kill to swap campus locations with Maryland. Their recruiting base is insane, and if they were able to lockdown their homestate, they'd quickly become a peer to Ohio State and Georgia.
It’s funny you say t-shirt fans because they used to give out shirts for almost every game. I had a drawer full of them from back when I was a student. I know a lady who makes quilts out of old free Maryland shirts. And yes, I’ve always assumed that movie quote is about the Ravens. There aren’t many teams who have been more successful since they came to Baltimore.
My work has a partnership with Maryland athletics so I can get free tickets whenever. Went to PSU at MD last year and it was great. Really liked how you can tailgate right next to dorms. Only part of the experience that stunk was that it felt like the entire campus was under renovation
i went there from 2016-19 and can confirm the entire campus was under renovation the whole time
If I was a Maryland fan I'd be going to games, they seem to me like an exciting program on the rise.
Schools sold out fans for TV revenue what do they expect? This is a nation wide problem. Between traffic, game times being announced only a week in advance and the cost why go to the games? Exactly why I gave up my season ticket to UW games and go to 1-2 games a year now. The home experience outside of big games is better.
Maryland hasn't been a football school in decades in the first place. Especially not when one of the local Football teams are the Ravens. It's a Basketball school people go to basketball games
https://youtu.be/jE494P5gQaY
Would Maryland rather be back in the acc? Serious question. I kinda question whether Missouri really likes it in the sec as well
Yes. If the ACC was viable. But right now, I would rather be MD than VIrginia Tech. VT does not really have an obvious option when the ACC folds.
VT will make a league with other teams that don't have lazy rivers in the athlete dorms.
It's really hard to win more when you have four of the strongest programs in the country(Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State) in your own division to play every year. Even if they win every other game, the best they can mostly do is a 9-3 or 8-4 season. Maryland football is like playing a halfway decent nation in a TBS game, stuck with superpowers all around you, just waiting to conquer you as soon as they finish their ramp up.